Early, Classical and Beyond

J.S. Bach
András Schiff (clavichord)
ECM New Series ECM 2635/36 (ecmrecords.com) 

As the 2CD J.S. Bach – Clavichord release liner notes explain, the clavichord was Bach’s favoured domestic keyboard, its intimate sound nevertheless allowing for a wide range of expression unavailable to the harpsichord. Veteran Bach specialist, Hungarian-British pianist and conductor András Schiff, makes full use of the clavichord’s impressive nimble and expressive capabilities in this recording of six Bach works. On display is his use of shaded dynamic tiers to distinguish contrapuntal voices in the music, as well as his subtle finger vibrato produced by vertically pressing the key after sounding the note. He also sometimes introduces a nuanced rubato along with the finger vibrato, heightening the drama in the music. 

Playing a 2003 replica of a 1743 Specken clavichord, which in certain passages leans toward a pleasant lute-like timbre, Schiff gives us a convincing Bach clavichord recital comparing favourably with Menno van Delft’s recording of the keyboard partitas. Bach’s two-part Inventions and three-part Sinfonias are particularly well represented. Each of the 15 movements in a different key, these pedagogic works were originally intended for students and amateurs, yet they number among the composer’s most original and expressive keyboard compositions.

ECM’s evocatively realistic sound engineering presents the clavichord as the modest living room instrument it was designed to be, designed for private study and enjoyment. Schiff knows the clavichord and this repertoire inside out, playing with musical poise and unaffected élan.

Beethoven – The Late Sonatas
Maurizio Pollini
Deutsche Grammophon 486 3014 (deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/beethoven-the-late-sonatas-pollini-12858) 

Having completed the recording of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas in 2014, renowned Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini revisits the last five with the intense yet simple approach of an artist who understands life. It is astounding that Pollini undertook the recording of such technically challenging works at the age of 80 and it is precisely this fact that makes the recording precious. Here we have an artist at the full height of life experience sharing deep mastery of his instrument via some of the most complex pieces of the piano repertoire. 

Piano Sonata Op.101 marks the beginning of the late period of Beethoven’s compositional trajectory, and it is nothing like the composer’s previous works. The essence of this sonata is freedom – freedom of form, harmony and expression. Pollini understands it well and conveys it with gusto. Piano Sonata Op.106 “Hammerklavier” remains underperformed on the concert stage even today due to the technical challenges it presents. It requires a performer with great emotional maturity, as Beethoven seems to have conjoined centuries of writing tradition with magnificent innovations of genius in this piece. Both Beethoven and Pollini, each in their own masterful way, are unapologetic of who they are as artists – vulnerable in their stance yet afraid of nothing. Pollini’s occasional faint singing in the background makes the recording come alive with immediate intimacy – this, simply, is life.

Clara Robert Johannes – Atmosphere and Mastery
Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra; Alexander Shelley
Analekta AN 2 8882-3 (analekta.com/en) 

Perhaps, as classical music fans, we like to think of our enjoyment of this music in a priori terms. Music for music’s sake and all that. As an extension of the better-known maxim, “l’art pour l’art,” (Art for Art’s Sake), this 19th-century declaration that art is most “true” when decoupled from extra-musical meaning or purposes (social, utilitarian etc.), provides a sort of tautological framework for our 21st-century tastes: classical music is good, because it is good music. Unlike such artifacts of mainstream culture as so-called “pop” music, whose raison d’être is a kind of didactic utilitarianism (music for dancing, music for escapism etc.), classical music, rightly or wrongly, has come to be seen as more other-worldly and elevated (some might say hifalutin). But, as we learn with Clara-Robert-Johannes, the third of a four-part recording cycle from Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra that mines both the Schumann/Brahms canon and their relationship, what could be more salaciously human than a potential relationship triangle marked by the entanglements of marriage, death and unrequited love? 

Performed skillfully under the direction of Alexander Shelley, this 2023 recording features some lesser-known pieces by the compositional triumvirate of Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms that, none-the-less, represent the high-water mark of Romantic-era beauty and sophistication. With greater compositional representation given here to Clara, not simply as muse to both Robert and Brahms, but rightly acknowledging and platforming her as a compositional force of equal magnitude and import, Clara-Robert-Johannes captures the complexities of both their music and of the human condition in this gorgeously captured and fine recording.

Chopin Recital 4
Janina Fialkowska
ATMA ACD2 2803 (atmaclassique.com/en) 

Canada can be proud of having many world class pianists. The confluence of diverse cultures is a happy breeding ground putting forth pianists of different backgrounds like Poland that produced this shining example, the Grande Dame of Canadian pianism, Janina Fialkowska. She is, as said by Arthur Rubinstein, a “born interpreter of Chopin,” whose credits are too numerous to mention – including concerts all over the world, the JUNO Award, the Order of Canada – she is praised for “her musical integrity and refreshing natural approach.”

Fialkowska records exclusively with ATMA Classique and this is her 15th release and fourth Chopin album. It’s a good cross section of various genres of Chopin’s genius: Polonaises, Nocturnes, Preludes, Ballades, Valses etc. Curiously enough a few of the pieces are not of the highest difficulty and within the capabilities of any aspiring piano student of Grade 8 level, (yours truly included) so these come back to me as old friends like the defiant, heroic Military Polonaise in A Major that starts off the program or the sweet, nostalgic Nocturne Op.55 No.1 in F Minor. Both are exquisitely played. These are followed by the Berceuse in D-flat Major, one of the most beautiful things Chopin ever wrote, played with a lovely sustained soft supple legato.

The big guns however are the virtuoso pieces like the Ballade in G Minor that starts off deceptively simple but gradually gets more and more complex and difficult with a prestissimo finish. The Scherzo No.3 in C-sharp Minor is even more demanding. The strong chords at the beginning remind me of Liszt, the incessant, cascading fioratures are so delicately and precisely played and the 110-bar coda finishes the piece with a big flourish.

Franck; Vierne – First and Last
Christopher Houlihan (organ)
Azica ACD-71356 (azica.com) 

If Paul Simon’s haunting 1970 song, The Only Living Boy in New York, ever needed a companion, a potential contender might be the only French-built organ in New York. Housed in that city’s Church of the Ascension, Pascal Quoirin’s Manton Memorial Organ is not only both played and captured beautifully on this new Azica recording by the celebrated American organist Christopher Houlihan, but with my aforementioned whimsical Simon reference, perhaps the door is now open for another, this time riffing on the folk composer’s 1968 song Bookends. Wherein that earlier Simon song tells the tale of two old friends who sit together on, one assumes, a New York park bench like old friends watching the tumbleweed of newspapers blow by, Houlihan here uses César Franck and Louis Vierne to musically bookend the French Romantic tradition of organ symphonies. In fact, marble busts of the composers’ halved faces appear on the album cover like literal “first and last” bookends. 

Beginning the recording with Franck’s Grande Pièce Symphonique Op.17 (1860–62) and closing with Vierne’s Symphonie No.6, Op.39 (1930), Houlihan – the current Artist-in-Residence at Toronto’s Trinity College where he also teaches and directs the Chapel Singers – both musically and historically demonstrates the richness of possibility that can occur when a skilled technician and thoughtful artist demarcates their creativity for compelling results. Narrow and focused in scope, but sprawling and grand in ambition, Houlihan, empowered here to mine the depths of a repertoire so “dependent on the particular sonorities,” he writes, of this particular French-built instrument, has found the context, instrument and conceit necessary to make a meaningful contribution to the discographic canon of fine organ recordings. 

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